Chapter 6 - GIULIA BELLANDI.
Giulia Bellandi was living under the name Julia Bennett in Milwaukee.
She taught middle-school art.
She owned a rescue dog named Oscar.
She paid taxes.
She had no criminal record.
And she nearly hit Caleb Morgan with a ceramic lamp when he knocked on her apartment door.
Vincent approved of her instincts.
Less so of the lamp.
“I told you not to come,” Giulia said once they were inside.
Vincent stared at her.
“You told no one anything.”
“I told Elena.”
The name changed the room.
Giulia was thirty-four now.
Dark hair cut at the shoulders.
No visible resemblance to her father except the eyes.
Vincenzo Bellandi had eyes people remembered.
So did his daughter.
“You knew my wife,” Vincent said.
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Eight months.”
“Why?”
“Because she found me.”
Giulia sat at the kitchen table.
Oscar growled at Vincent.
Vincent ignored him.
Claire had come.
Vincent had wanted her to stay with the girls.
Claire had said no.
Again.
He was beginning to understand that this was not disobedience.
It was personality.
Giulia looked at her.
“You’re Claire.”
Claire froze.
“How do you know me?”
“Elena described you.”
Vincent turned.
“Before the birth?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Elena knew the hospital was compromised.”
Claire went pale.
Giulia continued.
“She had looked into staff connections to Romano businesses. Your name was one of the few that wasn’t connected.”
Claire stared.
“She chose me?”
“She hoped she wouldn’t need you.”
Vincent sat.
Every answer seemed designed to reveal how much Elena had done alone.
“What ledger?”
Giulia studied him.
“You heard the recording.”
“Yes.”
“Then you found the blackbird.”
“Yes.”
Giulia leaned back.
“My father kept records on Dominic for years.”
“Why?”
“Because Dominic was using Bellandi companies to launder money and move weapons without my father’s permission.”
Vincent’s expression hardened.
Vincenzo Bellandi had hardly been an innocent businessman.
Giulia seemed to read the thought.
“My father was a criminal, Mr. Romano. He was also very particular about which crimes he committed.”
Claire almost smiled.
Vincent did not.
“Where is he?”
Giulia looked at him.
“Dead.”
“Actually?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Four years ago.”
“How?”
“Cancer.”
Vincent blinked.
After years of rumors, ambush theories, lakefront blood, and Sicilian execution stories, Vincenzo Bellandi had apparently died in a hospice bed in Wisconsin.
Giulia’s mouth twisted.
“He thought it was funny.”
“I don’t.”
“He wouldn’t have liked you.”
“The feeling was inherited.”
“Good.”
Claire interrupted.
“The ledger.”
Giulia looked at her.
“Not here.”
“Where?”
“In Chicago.”
Vincent leaned forward.
“Where?”
“My father hid it inside a place Dominic could enter but would never search.”
“That sounds like a riddle.”
“It was.”
“What place?”
“Your family chapel.”
Vincent stared.
The Romano chapel stood inside a Catholic cemetery on the West Side.
Three generations of his family were buried nearby.
Dominic visited twice a year.
Of course he would never search it.
Searching family graves required admitting family itself was suspect.
They drove back immediately.
Snow started halfway to Chicago.
By the time they reached the cemetery, flakes had coated the angels and headstones.
The family chapel was locked.
Vincent had a key.
Inside, the air smelled of stone and candle wax.
Claire stayed near the door.
Giulia walked directly to the marble plaque bearing Vincent’s father’s name.
ANTONIO ROMANO.
Beloved Husband. Father. Leader.
Giulia touched the word leader.
“My father hated this plaque.”
“Why?”
“Said Antonio would have preferred ‘beloved pain in the ass.’”
Vincent almost smiled.
Giulia pressed the edge.
A panel released.
Behind it was a narrow cavity.
Inside sat a black ledger.
Vincent lifted it.
The cover bore the same blackbird symbol.
He opened the first page.
Names.
Dates.
Payments.
Dominic Romano appeared repeatedly.
Shipping companies.
Union accounts.
Judicial retainers.
Private security invoices.
Six years of theft.
More.
Twelve years.
Vincent turned pages.
Then found Elena’s handwriting.
Dominic knows I know.
He stopped.
Claire leaned closer.
Below it:
If V. cannot see past blood, show him page 88.
Vincent turned to page 88.
One transfer.
Two million dollars.
From a Romano holding company to a medical consulting firm.
The date:
November 16.
One day before the twins were born.
The consulting firm belonged to St. Catherine’s hospital counsel.
Caleb whispered, “He paid the hospital before Elena went into labor.”
Vincent’s skin went cold.
“Then none of it was improvised.”
Claire’s face tightened.
“He planned the records.”
“Yes.”
Giulia said, “Keep going.”
Page 89.
A payment to a security contractor.
November 17.
At 1:10 a.m.
Thirty minutes before Elena arrived at the hospital.
Vincent stared.
“How would he know she was going into labor?”
Nobody answered.
Then Claire said:
“Maybe she didn’t.”
Vincent looked at her.
“What?”
“Was Elena full term?”
“Thirty-six weeks.”
Claire nodded slowly.
“Early enough that induction would matter.”
Vincent understood.
“No.”
Claire looked sick.
“If someone gave her medication…”
“No.”
But the idea had already entered.
The birth itself might have been forced.
Elena’s emergency.
The twins.
The locked floor.
The missing baby.
The falsified death.
Not chaos.
Design.
Giulia opened another section.
“Dominic was scared of Elena because she found the accounts.”
Vincent looked at her.
“Then why keep Ruby alive?”
Giulia hesitated.
“My father had a theory.”
“Which was?”
“That Dominic never intended Ruby to disappear forever.”
Claire stiffened.
“What do you mean?”
“He wanted leverage.”
Against Vincent.
A hidden daughter.
A living weakness.
A child he could produce one day if Vincent moved against him.
Claire looked horrified.
“But he lost her.”
“Yes.”
“Because I ran.”
Giulia nodded.
“You broke his plan.”
Claire sat on the chapel bench.
For five years, she had believed she was simply surviving.
Now she learned that survival had also ruined a conspiracy.
Vincent looked at her.
“You saved her.”
Claire shook her head.
“I kidnapped her.”
“You saved her.”
“You don’t know what would have happened.”
“I know what didn’t.”
Their eyes held.
Then Caleb’s phone buzzed.
He looked at the message.
“Boss.”
Vincent turned.
“We have movement at Claire’s old apartment.”
“What kind?”
“Two men entered ten minutes ago.”
Claire stood.
“Looking for what?”
“Probably whatever you left.”
“I left nothing.”
Giulia went still.
“Not nothing.”
Claire looked at her.
“What?”
“The photograph.”
Claire’s face changed.
Vincent understood.
The original photo of Elena holding both girls.
Claire had brought a copy.
The original remained hidden.
“Where?” Vincent asked.
Claire hesitated.
“Inside Ruby’s baby book.”
“Apartment?”
“Yes.”
Vincent closed the ledger.
“We go.”
“No,” Caleb said.
Everyone looked at him.
He rarely contradicted Vincent.
“The men are still inside. Let surveillance work.”
Claire’s face tightened.
“That book has Ruby’s first five years.”
Vincent understood why paper suddenly mattered more than evidence.
He also knew a trap when one walked into view.
“We wait.”
Claire glared.
“You hate that word too,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Good. Now you know how I feel.”
Before leaving the chapel, Claire stood in front of Antonio Romano’s plaque.
“Do you think he knew what Dominic was doing?”
Vincent looked at his father’s name.
“Not all of it.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No.”
He exhaled.
“My father believed control solved everything. If he knew there was a threat, he would have hidden information instead of sharing it.”
“Like the twins.”
“Yes.”
Claire looked at him.
“You do that too.”
Vincent’s expression hardened.
“Do what?”
“Decide what people can handle.”
He almost argued.
Then stopped.
Sophie had inherited five years of silence because adults kept deciding Vincent could not handle truth.
Claire saw the realization.
“I’m not saying tell children everything,” she said. “I’m saying don’t make fear sound noble.”
Vincent looked again at the stone plaque.
His father had taught him loyalty.
He had also taught him secrecy.
For most of Vincent’s life, those words had felt similar.
Now they did not.
Before they left the chapel, Giulia asked Vincent to wait.
She stood beneath the old stained-glass window with her hands in her coat pockets.
“My father said something about Elena once.”
Vincent turned.
“What?”
“He said she was the only person in either family who understood that winning and protecting people were not always the same thing.”
Vincent looked toward the black ledger.
“That sounds like him trying to sound wise.”
“It probably was.”
Giulia smiled faintly.
“But he meant it.”
Vincent thought of Elena arguing with him over security, over business dinners, over how many armed men were necessary to buy groceries.
At the time, he had called her reckless.
Maybe she had simply understood risk differently.
Claire came to stand beside him.
“Ready?”
Vincent nodded.
As they left, he looked back once at his father’s plaque and the hidden compartment.
Another secret placed inside stone.
Another generation expecting the next one to discover truth instead of speaking it.
He made himself a promise.
Whatever happened next, Sophie and Ruby would not inherit riddles.
An hour later, the men left.
Caleb’s team followed one.
The second entered a black SUV registered to a Romano company.
Vincent’s own company.
The vehicle drove directly to Dominic’s townhouse.
No more inference.
No more old records.
Dominic was actively searching for proof.
Vincent looked at the live feed.
Claire stood beside him.
“What now?”
May you like
Vincent closed his hand over Elena’s black ledger.
“Now my uncle learns that six years of lies have an expiration date.”
